ABSTRACT
The increasing and stochastic nature of consumers' demand on electricity brought about the need for alternative means of complimenting the existing energy demand. In this research work, a grid connected hybrid system was modeled to support and improve the power quantity of the Kaduna north existing network. Load profiling was done using Artificial Neural Network based on Bayesian regularization algorithm to determine one year load demand of the area under study. The load profiling was carried out and deficit power of 3.21MW was obtained which brought the need to augment the power from the grid using solar-hydro hybrid system. The developed hybrid system was interfaced to the grid via a step-up transformer and a phase locked loop was designed to synchronize the hybrid system with the grid. The solar photovoltaic system adopted the use of Solarex MSX64 using average solar radiation intensity of 653.45W/m2. The photovoltaic array consist of 50 parallel connected strings and each string consist of 80 series connected photovoltaic modules while two hydro turbines that employed the use of 1.5MW reaction turbine coupled with self-excited induction generator were used for hydropower system development. An average head of 6.04m and discharge of 25.6m3/s were used in design of the hydropower system. The developed hybrid system was implemented on a Matlab/Simulink environment. The output voltage of the solar photovoltaic cell was boosted using boost converter before connection to DC link bus bar while the AC voltage of the hydro system was converted to DC voltage using universal bridge converter before connecting to the DC link Bus bar. An inverter was used to convert the DC voltage of the hybrid system to AC voltage and a step-up power transformer was used to step the voltage to the utility grid voltage. Phase locked loop was designed to enable synchronization of the hybrid system with the grid. Based on the result obtained, the hydropower system produced 2.88MW and the solar photovoltaic system produced 330kW. The hybrid system was able to supplement a total power of 3.21MW to the grid. The developed model result was validated using a standard model results as contained in the work of Meshram et al (2013). The hybrid system modeled was able to carter for the deficit power from the grid and also improves the power quality and security of the grid.